Whitefish Energy, which only had two employees when Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, now has 280 workers on the island, the majority of whom are subcontractors, the Washington Post reported.

The contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is the largest issued so far in the relief effort, the report said.

PREPA decided to hire Whitefish instead of activating “mutual aid” arrangements it has with other utilities, understandings typically used among US power companies to hasten recovery efforts from natural disasters, such as the recent hurricanes in Texas and Florida.

see also

“The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish,” Susan F. Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies, told the newspaper. “I’m scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.”

Ricardo Ramos, PREPA’s executive director, has told reporters that Whitefish was chosen because it was the first company “available to arrive and they were the ones that first accepted the terms and conditions” of the authority.

“The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded,” he said.